This morning I got a letter from a little girl who asks me, "What is consciousness? I asked my teachers, they answered me it was very hard to explain"! (Mother laughs) So she's asking me. And since she asked me, I've been looking at it. How can we express it? Do YOU know how it can be explained? Because the words we use are meaningless.

Spontaneously, I'd say it's the fire or the breath that carries the whole world. It's the fire that makes everything live - that makes the chest breathe, that makes the sea heave ...
That's not bad!

What would YOU say?
Here is what I found: it's the cause of existence - the cause and the effect at the same time. But that's not it.

Your explanation is more poetic, it's more literary, but still I am not sure that's it.

It's the substance of the world, what constitutes the world.
Yes. If we say, "Without consciousness there is no world," it's much truer, but it doesn't explain. That was my first answer: without consciousness, no world, no existence.

It's the breath or the force that carries the world - that makes it be.
That's not bad, let's note it down!

Oh no! You are the one who must find it.
I have to answer this child.

Because otherwise, we are lost in abstractions.
Yes, and with abstractions, you use words that mean something else, that's all.

But how do YOU perceive consciousness?
Without consciousness, you can't feel anything. Consciousness is indeed the basis of all things.

(Mother looks at the child's letter and hands it to Satprem)

"Sweet Mother, I'd like to know: What is consciousness? I asked a teacher, but they said, 'It's very hard to explain.' I want your blessing so I do my exams well. You take my Pranams.[[Pranam: salutation, prostration. ]] Your little daughter."

Without consciousness, no existence, that's perfectly true, but it doesn't explain what consciousness is. But your explanation is poetic enough, at any rate! In Indian philosophy, they put Existence before Consciousness. They say Sat-Chit-Ananda.[[Sat-Chit- Ananda: existence-consciousness-bliss. ]] So if we say, Chit-Sat-Ananda...! And it's not true.

It's not true, the Rishis always spoke of Fire, "Agni," which is the primordial substance.
But is "fire" consciousness?

Yes, it becomes consciousness - it is consciousness. It's consciousness-force. The Rishis said, "Even in the stone he is there, even in the waters he is there."
Yes, when I had that experience of the pulsations of Love creating the world, the pulsation came first, and afterwards the consciousness - the consciousness of the pulsation.

So we could define it like this: when the ... the ... (I never know which name to use!) became conscious of Himself, that created the world.

In the Upanishads, they say "tapas"[[Tapas: energy or heat, or also the concentration of the power of consciousness. ]] created the world.
Yes, tapas is Power.

It's fire, too.
No, tapas is Power.

Chit-Tapas is heat.
They say, Sat, Chit-Tapas, Ananda. They put Chit-Tapas together. And it's Chit first, then Tapas. It's the creative power of consciousness.

But Sri Aurobindo always said "Consciousness-Force," indissolubly. We can't separate one from the other. There is no consciousness without force and no force without consciousness - it's Consciousness-Force. That's what the world is!
At any rate, it's not a very philosophical way to put it at all, it's very childlike, but it's much truer than metaphysical sentences: When the Lord became conscious of Himself, that created the world.

So, let's note down your definition for the child.

No, your definition first, that's the first stage! Then the second stage, the human.

(Mother laughs and writes:)

"When the Lord became conscious of Himself, that created the world."

Now your turn to say!

It's for you to say.
No, no! Let me hear it.

I don't know.... Consciousness is the breath or the fire that carries everything.
But if I say "fire," they'll immediately say, "Ah, consciousness is fire, then!"

The breath that carries everything, that makes everything breathe?

(Mother writes:)

"Consciousness is the breath that is the life of everything."

No ...

"that makes everything live."

You understand, it's going to go all around the School from one class to another! (Laughing) I know what's going to happen!

"Consciousness is the breath that makes everything live."

There. She is lucky, that little one. Children are amusing!


29 June, 1966, vol - 7, L'Agenda de Mère


Rita:
"The actual fact of death evokes in me an

experience in which one is thrust into space

and soars up."

Amusing! I found it very amusing. She is the only one, besides, the others are quite practical. [[This young girl, to whom death looked so graceful, was to die four years later. ]]

Dilip:
"A cessation of all physical activity caused by

the absence of a source of energy (or soul)."


It's not clear.... The other two are quite practical (!)

Anand:
"When the brain stops functioning and the

body starts decomposing, it's death."

(Mother laughs heartily)

The last one is quite matter-of-fact.

Abhijit:
"Blood circulation in the brain cells stops

completely."

That's death.

As for me, I'll tell them this (Mother reads with difficulty):

"Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells making up the physical body.

"Consciousness is, in its very nature, immortal, and in order to manifest in the physical world, it clothes itself in material forms that are durable to a greater or lesser degree.

"The material substance is in process of transformation to become an increasingly perfect and durable multiform mode of expression for that consciousness."

I am going to send it to them. But I appreciated their notes.... The interesting thing (for me) is that when I opened these four notes yesterday evening and read Abhijit's first, "When circulation stops ... ," then, I don't know, there certainly was a special grace over me, because I read those words and was instantly put in contact with the most objective, calm and detached scientific spirit - that was its way of seeing and describing the phenomenon: no emotion, no reaction, simply like that. And I saw (I understood and saw infinitely more than the boy put into it) a whole wisdom there, a scientific wisdom. And at the same time, the perception of the remedy in the evolutionary course of things. The most material remedy.

It gave me a whole series of experiences in the night and the morning, certainly far exceeding the field covered by their four reflections.... With the little girl [Rita], there was the impression, the vision of all those to whom death is a gateway to a marvelous realization.

It all came so spontaneously and naturally that I felt as if it was THERE. Now that you've read it back to me (laughing), I realize it's not there! But it came so spontaneously: I sat there, reading those four notes, and it came one after another. Especially Abhijit's, this completely objective, or anyway completely detached vision of the phenomenon: "Circulation stops ..." As if you were looking at a small instrument or tool (Mother gestures as if fingering a small object), and you remarked, "Oh, it's stopped now ... that's why it no longer works." Like that. In other words, none of those uncertainties or anxieties or aspirations.... All that was emotions, sentiments, psychological phenomena - it was all completely absent.... A very simple little contraption (same fingering gesture) which you look at as you would a machine, and the machine stops "because it no longer goes like that." There. And as a result, this body was completely detached from all human anguish - from everything: not only from anguish, but from the habit, the whole human formation about death - it was all gone. As if I were all the way up above, like that, and looking all the way down - hup! it went away.


page 132-34 , Mother's Agenda , volume 9 , 18th May - 1968

Sweet Mother, we have received your answer with joy and send you our reflections and our questions about the first paragraph: "Death is the phenomenon of decentralization and scattering of the cells...."
So then?

Abhijit says, "If a cell becomes conscious of its own personality, there is a risk that it may act in its own interest without regard for the collective interest."
(Mother laughs) The interest of a cell!

Then?

Amitangshu asks two questions. The first is, "Does the decentralization take place all at once or in degrees?..."
It takes time.

It happens like this: the central will of the physical being abdicates its will to hold all the cells together. That's the first phenomenon. The central will accepts dissolution. But everything doesn't just scatter all at once - it takes a long time.

What precedes death is accepting to cease the centralization in the form for some reason or other. I have noticed that one of the strongest reasons (one of them, very strong) is a sense of irreparable disharmony. Another is a sort of disgust at carrying on the effort of coordination.

There are, in fact, innumerable reasons, but there is a sort of effort of cohesion and harmonization, and what inevitably precedes death (unless it's caused by a violent accident) is that, for one reason or another, or for no reason, that will to maintain cohesion abdicates.

There's a second question: "Must each cell be conscious of its unity with the center?"
That's not how it is.

(after a long silence)

It's hard to make them understand.... It's still a semicollective consciousness, not an individual consciousness of the cells.

Then?

Anand Arya asks this: "Does the decentralization always take place after death, or can it begin before?"
(Laughing) It often begins before!

Dilip M. asks, "Do the cells scatter in space or within the body? If it is in space, then the body must disappear with the cells?"
Naturally! Naturally, after death the body dissolves. But it takes a long time....

These children don't know because [in India] bodies are burned.

Rita asks, "In the phrase 'scattering of the cells,' doesn't the word 'scattering' have a particular meaning? If so, which one?"
I used the word in its quite positive meaning.

I have even seen that those cells that have been specially developed and have become conscious of the divine Presence within themselves, when the concentration that gives shape to the body is stopped and the body dissolves (it dissolves little by little), all those conscious cells spread out and enter other combinations in which, through contagion, they awaken the consciousness of the Presence each of them had. So then, it's through this phenomenon of concentration, development and scattering that Matter in its totality evolves, so to speak, and learns through contagion, develops through contagion, experiences through contagion.

But what enters other combinations isn't the cell itself - it's the subtle consciousness of the cells?
Yes, of course! The cell, too, dissolves. It's the CONSCIOUSNESS of the cells that penetrates others.

It's very hard to explain to one who doesn't have the experience.


3 Juin, 1968, vol - 9, L'Agenda de Mère